WoW – More fun together!

Halfus Combinations and Strats *updated*

So I made this table… Probably it is half wrong but I was borded and it is there so I figured I might as well post it so people can mock me. Tell me what is wrong and I can make it better. It is not very good but HTML tables are a pain in the whelpling.
A=Nether Scion
B=Slate Dragon
C=Storm Rider
D=Whelplings
E=Time Warden

Reversion edited it so it’s a good bit more readable. While we haven’t downed him we’ve seen a lot of attempts so if there’s any advice we can pass on…. I’ve found popping Tree about 15 seconds in to be key to getting through that mind blowing damage.

This week we have the whelps, the Slate drake (Mortal Strike) and the Storm drake (Shadow Nova) combination. I too have discovered that I need tree in the beginning to survive that… but the WG cooldown makes me cry. There is sooo much AoE damage.

Yesterday (our first tries) we tried to burn the Storm drake, but the tanks just died so fast. The pally (boss tank) let the stacks get up to 8 or so, bubbled, let them stack again, and the warrior (add tank) taunted after that. But since the pally already had a hefty healing debuff, he kinda died before it had time to expire, because that dragon add *hurts*.

For tonight, we’re thinking of releasing 2 at the same time: whelps and Storm (one tank on drake, one tank on boss+whelps). AoE the whelps, keep someone on the boss for interrupts, then kill Storm, then Slate. In theory, this would mean a little less raid damage and more damage done to the boss… though I’m sure it will hurt as hell to heal. (Our combo is one resto druid + 2 holy priests btw.)

If I’m reading the table correctly, your suggestion is to free the Slate drake first… but wouldn’t that mean the Shadow Nova will kick our ass in a big way? It was horrible even when it was (supposedly) interrupted and the guys missed one or two of them.

Trying to reply to Jen’s reply – ok, so leave the Slate dragon down and get Storm up first, it is critical to interrupt on that, yes. I think we’d then pull up the whelps and leave Slate down entirely, tanks just have to handle swaps.

The stacks hurt. The AOE hurts. This is not a healing friendly fight. At all. We’ve been doing resto druid + 2 shaman and that was not working at all this week; I swapped one shaman for a paladin and that worked much better. Tell the holy priests to blow their cooldowns at the start too.

If your problem with this setup is the tanks dying that is not good. You will not like the combo that stacks the debuff twice as fast, at all… Tank swapping is the only way to handle it as you’ve seen. But the tanks do take a ton of damage.

This fight is definitely the hardest of the four I’ve seen thus far in the expansion. All the dragons suck.

As Analogue said, leave the Slate down the whole fight. The buff you get does NOT stack so the math works out there there is no benefit at all to bringing up the 3rd dragon.

Don’t AOE the whelps!!!!
AOE is too slow. AOE means you get the FULL damage the whole time. If you single target the damage on the tank drops off fast and things get easier.
Having the boss tank do the whelps will be hard. A pally can do it with their many taunts. Also as I understand it a pally bubbling themself retains the agro when they come out. Otherwise it would be impossible.

When the weak link is the tank dying, have everyone blow DPS cooldowns and hero right of the bat. It actually only makes a small difference at the end of the fight. We tried it both ways and the difference was only 5-7%. It was well worth it when NOT using it means you wipe with none down.

I don’t call for a bubble until my stacks are over 12. If I was bubbling myself I would do it right at 14. I can do that only by stacking my cooldowns just right. 8 is too early. The stacks go to 20 before healing is zero. If it takes him using lay on hands to get the stacks up higher then he should do it. The higher that stack gets the first time the lower they are ever after.
When I got them to 14, after that they never got more than 6 before we tank swapped. Bubble is too powerful not to make the most of it.

1) Pull the boss from a distance. This saves you several stacks that are stacked even before the target dragon is targetable.
2)The tank should use cooldowns in an overlaping and building up way ONLY after you get 6 or 8 stacks,
3) Don’t bubble until you hit 12 or 14
4) Blow all DPS cooldowns early

If you do all this the first dragon should be VERY low before when the bubble happens. This means the tank will only have 4 or 5 stacks when you swap tanks. If the healers are warned taht your MT is about to take a big few hits when the swap happens then they should be able to keep him up.

If you bring up the whelps WITH the other dragon make darn sure they are single targetting and not AOEing. The faster a couple of them die the faster your healing will stabilize. If you burn them first (not the dragon) then it might work ok.

Thanks for the advice. I forgot to check back here last night, but that’s pretty much what we did (except single targetting the whelps… that didn’t occur to me).

We’re probably need to use that bubbling strategy this week too, since we got Slate again, but I’m not very sure we’ll get much done. Our pally tank is inexperienced, I know fuck all about tanking so I can’t coordinate the stacks… and if taunting at the right moment was an issue (over and over), I’m having doubts about taunting + bubbling + tanking in the meantime. I’m looking forward to the other pally tank getting back from holiday!

Out of the 3 fights I’ve seen so far, this definitely seems the hardest. Or maybe we just need to find a better strategy… Magmaw was *bad* until we started tanking the adds. All in all, last night was a wipefest (on the best try we got one drake down before the tanks died), so we’re prooobably going to Maloriak this week.

You don’t have the shadow nova one and that is a blessing. Wake up the speed boost guy and then the fireballs guy if at all possible. You may have to wake both at the same time. A strategy for while you’re learning the fight is to have three tanks, one for boss, one for each dragon.

I’m not sure there is any other strategy for this fight. It just hurts.

We do have the Shadow Nova guy 😦 Storm (Nova), Slate (Mortal Strike) and Time (fireball). Most strats I’ve read so far say to kill Storm, kill Time, offtank Slate until the boss is dead. But for now, Halfus can go DIAF, I’m going to try Maloriak… I’m sick to death of random dragons.

Oh gosh I hope you’re right – I think we can DO that combo. Lots of aoe damage yes but no interrupts means the first drake will come down fast, we can free the whelps and then the Time Warden probably one at a time.